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Friday, 24 February 2012

Painter's Tape Roadway

Yesterday I handed the boy a fresh roll of painter's tape and suggested he use it to build a road on the carpet. Immediately his eyes lit up with excitement.

"I can put tape on the carpet??"
"Can I use as much as I want??"
"What if I use the whole roll?"
"Thank you, Mommy, for letting me do this!"

I first saw the idea on Pinterest (you can find my Pinterest boards here!), where Imagination Soup had done this project using coloured duct tape. Thanks for the inspiration, Imagination Soup!

The boy started off small, preferring to cut and precisely place small pieces of tape. He soon had an elaborate combination of curves and straight lines.

He had a very particular system worked out as to which parts were road and which parts were train tracks. I know, because I drove a car on the train track and was quickly reprimanded.

Eventually he moved on to bigger and longer roads, taking his road halfway across the room in one fell swoop.

He finished off with a little ramp for good measure.

When the road was done (aka the tape ran out), they moved on to making a house out of board books.

Or maybe it was a parking garage.

The road is still there and holding up well. I think we'll pull it up this weekend (I've already checked; it comes up smoothly!), but this will definitely be a project we'll tuck away for another rainy day. Time to stock up on more painter's tape!

Ok, I'm hiding from Pinterest because I know I will never get anything done around my house ever again if I even look at it, but it keeps sneaking up on me anyway! This is the second "accidental Pinterest project" I've seen this week!

Anyway, I did something similar to this when I taught preschool and worked in child care. We made kid sized roads or train tracks with painters tape, and the kids became the car (or train) and holy cow, it was adorable. We also made a "creek" that was really narrow at one end and really wide at the other and we had to jump over it without getting "wet". So much fun, especially on rainy days.

I must say, though, he did an amazing job on his road and rail system!

Either I'm blind, or my computer isn't showing somewhere where I can just simply comment. So... But I had to say, what a great idea! I'm storing this away....I really want to work at being a fun mom who comes up with creative ideas.

Angie- those are great, too! I need to start a list of ideas for occupying/playing with toddlers/preschoolers...and these will all go on it!